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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487352">Stone Elephants</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio'>Sholio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [25]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Iron Fist (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Sibling Bonding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:54:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,698</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487352</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joy and Ward start to patch things up a little bit.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joy Meachum &amp; Ward Meachum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [25]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1232444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stone Elephants</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for a Tumblr request for Joy and Ward getting some closure.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As soon as Joy opened the door to Ward's hospital room, a strong spicy-sweet smell tickled her nose. It smelled like someone had dumped a spice cabinet in here.</p>
<p>"Danny, no," Ward was saying, sounding weak and hoarse, and yet deeply irritated at the same time. "If you set that on fire, there will be five nurses in here immediately to throw you out. Also, I do not want to be responsible for you setting off the fire alarms. You know what I don't need right now? Being evacuated from my hospital room because you had to burn incense in here."</p>
<p>"The nurses have been very supportive so far," Danny retorted obstinately, carefully arranging incense sticks in a burner shaped like an elephant on the shelf above Ward's bed. It was one of at least a dozen, variously shaped and sized, that Joy could see in a cursory glance around the room.</p>
<p>"Yes, mostly because they're trying to be respectful of your religion and you haven't explained to them that what you are isn't actually a Buddhist, it's some bonkers combination of things that you soaked up in your mystic mountain city while you were barely listening to -- oh hey," Ward said, and his voice went soft at the end, and now he was looking at her and so was Danny.</p>
<p>Joy took a breath and straightened her spine and gave Danny a sharp nod. "Ward," she said. "Danny. Boys. Can I, uh ... talk to my brother for a minute?"</p>
<p>"Oh ... right ... yeah!" Danny hastily dropped a bundle of incense sticks on the shelf, patted Ward's arm, made a movement as if to pat Joy's, and then hastily vacated the room, closing the door carefully behind him.</p>
<p>"Thank God," Ward said. "Please open a window."</p>
<p>Joy hesitated, then moved incense-related clutter so she could get to the crank on the window. It opened a few inches and looked out on the air conditioning equipment on a rooftop, but at least it cleared some of the choking smell from the room. "What is he doing in here?" she asked.</p>
<p>"Some kind of cleansing thing? God knows. It seems to be making him happy, though."</p>
<p>"He's an idiot."</p>
<p>"Don't, Joy," Ward said, and she looked around in surprise at the vehemence in his voice, the sharp edge of --</p>
<p>... of something that had been deployed, once upon a time, at anyone who threatened her. Not against her.</p>
<p>She sat down quietly at the edge of his bed.</p>
<p>Ward rubbed a hand across his face. He looked terrible, very pale with dark shadows under his eyes. Then again, she'd seen him looking worse, and that made her laugh quietly to herself.</p>
<p>"What?" Ward said, giving her a look over the edge of his half-lowered hand.</p>
<p>"Just ...." She was going to say something about legal doctor-approved drugs, but couldn't quite shape it into a sentence, and any version she tried in her head came out sounding mean, anyway. She didn't know what it was about Ward anymore that seemed to bring out that side of her. "Just a private joke. Never mind."</p>
<p>Ward looked at her for a steady moment, then he dropped his hand to rest on his chest. "They say you gave me a blood transfusion."</p>
<p>"Yes, well," she said, looking away from that steady stare, only to have her gaze drop to her arm and the still dully aching catheterization site where they'd taken the blood. "Blame Dad and his rare blood type. Donors for Meachums are hard to find."</p>
<p>"Thank you."</p>
<p>She closed her hand into a fist on her knee. "Ward, it's not that big of a deal. Don't make a big thing out of it."</p>
<p>"Yeah. Sorry. Didn't mean to."</p>
<p>He sounded tired. Worn down. Joy closed her eyes briefly, and then put out her hand and laid it over his, her fingers curling lightly into the hollow of Ward's. It had felt comfortable, once, to do this, and she thought of Ward holding her hand in an ambulance almost a year ago. The details of the memory were blurred by morphine -- mainly she remembered rambling a lot. But the sense-memory of his fingers cupping hers was still there.</p>
<p>"You know," she said, addressing the comments not to him but to the incense burner on the shelf above his head, which was staring at her with a vaguely addled expression. "I've been thinking a lot over the last year."</p>
<p>Ward's fingers twitched in her hand. "Just the last year, huh?"</p>
<p>And <i>that</i> was the big brother she'd grown up with, those times when he'd unclench a little and tease her ... she had to close her eyes for a minute. "You know what I mean. About what you said, and ... Dad. All of it."</p>
<p>"Yeah," he said, on a sigh. "I know."</p>
<p>"I didn't know about Dad, Ward."</p>
<p>"I know," he said again. "I didn't tell you."</p>
<p>"No, you didn't. Ward, I --" She broke off and rubbed her forehead with her free hand. There were so many, so <i>many</i> places along the twisty road of their lives that they both could have made different choices. "I wish you'd told me," she said at last.</p>
<p>"I wish I had too."</p>
<p>"... not to change the subject, but can I turn this thing toward the wall? Because I don't think I can have an important conversation with you while it's staring at me."</p>
<p>Ward twisted a little, with a grimace of discomfort, to look up at the doofy-faced elephant gazing out in the room with its mismatched eyes. "Yes. Please."</p>
<p>Joy leaned over the bed and turned it around to face the wall. "Where did he get this, a flea market in Chinatown?"</p>
<p>"Possibly off Craigslist."</p>
<p>"You've changed a lot," she said abruptly.</p>
<p>Ward blinked at the topic swerve. "Have I?"</p>
<p>"You have. I keep forgetting about it whenever I'm not around you. Then I talk to you and it hits me all over again. You're ... <i>relaxed,</i> now," she said in wonder. </p>
<p>
  <i>All those years I thought I knew you inside and out, the way you always know someone you've grown up with. And it turned out that I only knew what you were like when you were miserable.</i>
</p>
<p>"Maybe Danny's meditation lessons are having an effect," Ward said with a sleepy grin. He seemed to be drifting now.</p>
<p>"Maybe they are." She squeezed his hand. "Listen, you look like you're falling asleep. I just stopped by to say hi anyway."</p>
<p>His eyes opened a little, and he gripped her hand, though there was no strength in it. "Stay for a while," he whispered.</p>
<p>"I don't think I can." She could only imagine the awkward conversations that would ensue with Danny if she had to sit here for hours. Danny wasn't even angry; he seemed delighted to see her every time she showed up. Which, in a way, made it even worse. "But listen, I'll come back tomorrow, okay? Are you allowed to have solid food yet? I can smuggle in the crab dip from that place where we always used to order in when we had to work late."</p>
<p>"Don't know if I'm up to crab dip yet," he murmured. His fingers were slipping through hers, relaxing. "Just bring you."</p>
<p>She didn't say anything, but leaned forward to kiss his forehead. His skin was chilly to the touch.</p>
<p>His fingers relaxed in hers completely. She sat for a minute, watching him sleep, then got up. She started to turn the ridiculous elephant incense burner back around, then just picked it up and took it with her, along with the box of incense sticks.</p>
<p>Danny was out in the waiting area down the hall, sitting crosslegged on a chair with his eyes closed. He came alert immediately when she walked out, and she wondered if he'd actually been meditating or just sitting like that to keep people from talking to him. "Joy! How did your talk go? How is he?"</p>
<p>"About like he was when you saw him five minutes ago, except sleeping," she said, and started for the elevator to see if she could escape without any conversation ensuing.</p>
<p>"Is that my <i>xianglu?"</i></p>
<p>"I don't know what that is," she said, and made a hasty, flustered attempt to stuff it into her purse, which didn't work because it was too big. The doofy elephant face poked out of her sleek leather clutch, looking even more ridiculous.</p>
<p>"It's okay. You're welcome to have it. Thanks for coming to see him, Joy. I know it really means a lot to him."</p>
<p>"Yes, well ... goodbye," she said, and escaped into the elevator.</p>
<p>In the parking garage, she threw her purse in the backseat, stupid incense burner and all. She ought to just trash the thing. </p>
<p>But instead, she took it home with her and put it on the marble countertop. It could not possibly have looked more out of place there, a lumpy, poorly made elephant, clearly well-used from the soot smudges that it had left on the spotless countertop and on her purse ... and hands ... and skirt ... and car seat ...</p>
<p>She looked up on her phone how the incense sticks were supposed to be put in. She had a long-style barbecue lighter in a kitchen drawer along with a couple of tapers. It lit up readily enough, and the smoke curled ceilingwards and immediately set off her smoke detector.</p>
<p>"For fuck's sake," she murmured. She fanned the smoke away from it, opened a window, and then carefully moved the little elephant, trailing smoke, over to the windowsill. Her whole apartment now smelled like a head shop.</p>
<p>But, even if she didn't believe in any sort of healing or cleansing properties, there <i>was</i> something calming about the smoke curling up from the incense, making elaborate patterns as it curled in the breeze from the window. It was a chill, damp day outside, but the cool air, the smell of exhaust, the sound of the traffic outside brought an unfamiliar sense of connection to the city that was normally little more than a backdrop for her daily life. She curled up on the couch and tucked her feet under her, and watched it burn.</p>
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